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The Matrix: Resolutions
Slappy White writes "For six months, Matrix message boards were aflame with speculation, theories, predictions and outright psychotic guessing about Revolutions. Now the film is here, and this article has a humorous roundup of some of the popular theories, both those that were close and others that were, shall we say, a little off the mark." I still haven't seen this film, so I'll refrain from passing judgment, but I'm ever so happy the matrix-within-a-matrix theories were unfounded. Update: 11/09 02:38 GMT by CN : Some folks who've never seen the Twilight Zone or even the Simpsons' Treehouse of Horrors thought that was a spoiler. If you're one of those people, I'm very sorry.
well as i said there's no more text in this posting. just thank you for the spoiler, CN!
"...whatever third (Matrix) movie you envisioned in your head, no matter how lame, has got to be better than this."
-critic at Rotten Tomatoes.com on The Matrix: Revolutions
Oh, we beg to differ...
The Matrix Resolutions
167 Days of Fan Speculation, Revisited
by Jay Pinkerton and David Wong
Like brainwashed pod prisoners attached to a futuristic power plant of some kind, fans of popular science fiction used to spend their lives cocooned in their parents' basements, cut off from human contact. They floated dreamily in the pink and slimy make-believe world of their favorite films, with a bundle of "hoses" crammed into their "colons" that would, in a strictly symbolic sense, "vacuum their excrement."
The Matrix changed all that. Now science fiction fans are popular, well-adjusted studs and hotties who leave their houses to play racquetball and extreme-parachute out of helicopters. When not risking their lives and having fantastic sex, these fans met online to discuss their well-rounded and not-at-all-crazy hypotheses as to what these films mean and, more importantly, to guess how the series would conclude after Reloaded.
We here at PWoT spent a year of strenuous weight training and greased-hands rock climbing getting our web comedian bodies into a shape that could pass for Matrix fans, allowing allow us to tunnel inside their online underground unnoticed. What we found was six months' worth of theorizing, philosophizing and thirteen other kinds of mental Kung-Fu in feverish preparation for the final film, everyone trying to unlock its mysteries beforehand.
Some of you out there, admittedly, were very close. Others of you were idiots. But all of you tried, and by our estimates the following debates consumed some 400 billion hours of internet time and generated approximately 75.2 quadrillion misspelled words.
Debate #1: Will the Machines be Destroyed?
Debate #2: Is There a Matrix Within a Matrix?
Debate #3: Will The Twins Be Back?
Debate #4: Who's The One?
Debate #5: Was It All a Dream?
Debate #6: Who's Human? Who's a Machine?
Debate #7: Who's The Bad Guy Here?
Debate #8: Who'll Win the Big Fight?
Debate #9: Who Will Die?
Debate #10: Is This the End?
DEBATE #1: WILL THE MACHINES BE DESTROYED?
Though every internet debate was a potential landmine for Matrix fans, at least one theory had almost total online support: the film would end with Neo handing Agent Smith his lunch. Neo would then take over the Matrix and hand that pretentious Architect his lunch by forcing the defeated Colonel Sanders impersonator to fellate him, maybe even rubbing salt in his wounds with some "Oh, look - now your mouth's full, vis-a-vis my dick!" trash talk.
Humans could then reclaim the surface of their scorched planet and free their empodded brethren. The third act would portray six billion naked humans gleefully slaughtering the machines by the tens of millions, humanity racing against the clock to sneak in some last-minute genocide before mass starvation and sterilization from nuclear fallout rendered their own species extinct.
Savvy Matrix fans took one look at all that business in Reloaded where the film-makers tried to humanize the machines, and instinctively knew it was all only to make their inevitable destruction and torture that much more satisfying for us, the viewers. Once and for all, we knew, humankind would have its revenge on the machines' for having the gall to trick us into blotting out our own sky and making our planet unhabitable.
Or maybe not. To the surprise of many fans already sketching fairly graphic notebook drawings of slaughtered machines with smoke pouring out of their eye cavities, Revolutions instead gave us man and machine, living in some kind of weird state of... not-war. (Sadly, no word has been invented for this yet).
This confused and outraged many Matrix fans, who'd already spent hours on the web explaining that man and computers could never really live in such
Hear, hear.
:-P
Cowboyneal, please use your update:ly powers to axe that line before you piss off everyone.
After all, some people haven't read the article yet.
The makers of the Matrix have said for years that it is NOT a matrix-within-a-matrix.
This is fairly common knowledge, and not, imho, a spoiler.
.
M3 was a vast improvement. They ditched a lot of the Hollywood nonsense and that's what's peeved a lot of viewers. People expected:
- Explanations for issues raised in M2 - but they didn't get them.
- A happy ending with Neo and Trinity going off into the sunset hand-in-hand - nope, spectularly opposite yet still a victorious ending
- for it to continue the language of Hollywood as happened in the second film - there were a handful of cases, but by and large it was a fairly un-Hollywood like production
Anyone who went in saying "I know why Neo has powers in the real world and how Agent Smith is able to enter a body in the real world" left Revolutions without a new explanation, or thinking they'd been told they were wrong and it's just what's is is is. Insofar as that happened, it's a bad movie, the fact the questions were not being answered could have been more emphasised.There was precious little in the good-guys vs bad-guys stuff. The line between the two opposing forces - the machines and the humans - is blurred, a new life form is inserted (or rather seperated) into the equation, and only a computer virus continues to be unambiguously necessary to defeat.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The Bad Guys lost!
The only "Bad Guys" that lost were the Smiths. The machines didn't 'lose', they pulled a Minbari: they had humanity cornered and doomed, then they surrendered and buggered off without an explanation (well, the audience knows the reason, but the Zionites don't).
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
They ask questions, that is okay.
But when they have Neo actually affecting reality, those questions HAVE to be answered.
In the first movie, Neo did not affect reality, only the illusion. So the questions were okay as they were left.
Once Neo kills machines in the real world by thinking at them, HOW he does that needs to be answered.
I'm glad you're pleased with movie #3. Many three year olds are pleased watching hour after hour of Barney.
Draw your own conclusions from that.
From the latter article I reference above:
"The Wachowski Brothers' vision for The Matrix is one that extends far beyond the theatrical trilogy, and the world they have created is so rich that we've chosen to tell inter-connected Matrix-related stories in multiple mediums," said Joel Silver, producer of the Matrix films. "Our goal in collaborating with Ubi Soft is to create a multiplayer online game that reflects the trilogy's highly stylized storytelling and innovative action, taking fans beyond the boundaries of the movie screen and into a 'persistent world' where they can fully explore the vast realm of the Matrix."
Revolutions wasn't supposed to give you the answers to everything. In fact, at the same time that Reloaded came out, a video game called Enter The Matrix came out, which contains some information pretaining to the Oracle and the family (father, mother, child) you see at the beginning of Revolutions in the train station. You learn who the family is, and, more importantly, what deal the father made with the Mero (french dude) in Reloaded (yes, he's in Reloaded, being led away from the table when Nero, Morpheus, and Trinity approach the Mero in the Resturant in Reloaded). In Revolutions, you only learn of the father's side of the deal. You never learn what the Mero got in return.
I've seen the movie and was dissapointed that it didn't answer my questions and I would probably have to play Enter The Matrix and The Matrix Online in order to grasp some of the answers I was expecting. I'm not a game-playing person and don't necessarily want to play the games.
If you realize that Revolutions isn't going to answer your questions and just sit back and enjoy it, it is actually a good movie. The more I think about the movie (I saw it Wednesday morning), the more I realize that it wasn't nearly as disappointing as I first thought.
I just wish it answered more questions, and, therefore, didn't force me to play the video and on-line games to fully grasp everything.
The girl next to me at work sent this. I think her friend, whos name I don't know, compiled it.
"So disappointing they may as well have bussed in Ewoks to save Zion."
-- Christopher Null, FILMCRITIC.COM
"Too bad the Wachowski brothers marry their mind-blowing visuals to some of the worst war movie clichs ever written."
-- Sean O'Connell, ECLIPSE MAGAZINE
"Though visually spectacular, 'The Matrix Revolutions' is a disappointing climax to what had previously been one of the great movie series of recent years." - Peter Sobczynski, CRITIC DOCTOR
"The Wachowskis... lean so heavily on concepts and designs from Aliens... that you half-expect to hear Bill Paxton wailing 'Game over, maaaaan!' in the background."
-- James Sanford, KALAMAZOO GAZETTE
"It's actually at its best when it's the most pretentious. Its loud and repetitive action sequences are impressive enough, but we've seen them all before."
-- Steve Rhodes, STEVE RHODES' INTERNET REVIEWS
"For all the ponderous philosophizing found in Reloaded, Matrix Revolutions is surprisingly straightforward and more than a little cheesy."
-- Bill Pearis, CITYSEARCH
"Theres a warmed-over feeling that permeates what should have been the defining film of the trilogy."
-- Rebecca Murray, ABOUT.COM
"Please someone, get me the blue pill. I want to forget that this ambitious and noteworthy series is ending so weakly."
-- Nell Minow, MOVIE MOM AT YAHOO! MOVIES
"A mixture of frantic but empty action and solemn, even more vacuous philosophizing that ends up simultaneously pretentious and puerile."
-- Frank Swietek, ONE GUY'S OPINION
"While superior to Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions still can't quite justify turning a stand-alone classic into a misguided trilogy."
-- Alex Sandell, JUICY CEREBELLUM
"The final chapter in the Wachowski brothers' trilogy about stylish sunglasses, leather trenchcoats, freshly baked cookies and Wire Fu."
-- Jon Popick, PLANET SICK-BOY
"After all is said and done, I wish they would have left the trilogy to one."
-- Danny Minton, KBTV-NBC (BEAUMONT, TX)
"Seems like Matrix Reloaded with a little tweaking."
-- Harvey S. Karten, COMPUSERVE
"With The Matrix Revolutions, the Wachowski brothers have managed to pull off something nearly impossible. They've made a movie about the end of the world that leaves us entirely indifferent to the outcome."
-- Chris Vognar, DALLAS MORNING NEWS
"The Matrix Revolutions sucks."
-- Peter Travers, ROLLING STONE
"Reloaded was certainly a lumpy, gaseous treatise of a movie, but viewers of Revolutions may find themselves looking back on it fondly."
-- A.O. Scott, NEW YORK TIMES
"There's relatively less of the clunky alternation of big action and static speechifying that stalled Reloaded. But there's also less storytelling fervor from the Wachowskis."
-- Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
"Better than Reloaded, but the thrill is gone."
-- Michael Rechtshaffen, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
"How did something that started out so cool get so dorky?"
-- Manohla Dargis, LOS ANGELES TIMES
"Louder, longer, more expensive and dumber than its predecessors, Revolutions is a mediocrity that will provide escapism only to those who head for the theater exits."
-- Colin Covert, MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
the emotional impact of this movie is zilch."
-- Paul Clinton, CNN
"The Matrix trilogy is so named for a reason: The most compelling aspect of the movies is that way-cool space. Revolutions spends too little time there."
-- Leigh Johnson, HOLLYWOOD.COM
"The Wachowskis have served up passable entertainment... but they fail to deliver on their own mythology."
-- Laura Clifford, REELING REVIEWS
"Visually stunning but a huge disappointment. The resolution sucked! "
-- Victoria Alexander, FILMSINREVIEW.COM
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
The machines are using humans as batteries "combined with a form of fusion". That's like me powering my house by this hamster in a wheel "combined with nuclear power plants through the national grid".
He uses 802.11zzz.
Because it's a lame plot device. It's called a deus ex machina; literally "god from the machine".
It's funny you mention that. Guess what the name of that big spiky machine at the end is? Its name, though not mentioned in the movie, is the Deus Ex Machina.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Oh, and here I was thinking the Oracle "allow[ing] her old shell to be destroyed" was because Gloria Foster, the actress who played the Oracle in 1 and 2, died in the middle of filming. But I'm sure the Wachowskis were intending to use a mystical, pseudo-bullsh*t explanation all along, just like with every other aspect of the movie, so that cubicle philosophers could fill in the details for them.
Yeah, that's probably it.
beware the jabberwock, my son! the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!